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A world of adventure in an age of sorcery and steam. Join the fight against the enemies of Queen and Empire. Battle ancient evils, uncover sinister plots, and root out predators stalking the cobble-stoned streets. Your tools are arcane magics, steam-driven marvels, and a stiff upper lip. Learn more at our website: http://www.cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/victoriana/

Queensberry Rules: Combat
After the discussion of the first “rough cut” and further playtesting we’ve developed an alternate set of rules designed to speed play and smooth out some of the uncertainties that can crop up with initiative, attack declarations, multiple actions, and pool splitting. As to the latter, pools are no longer split under this option.

Here are the relevant tweaks if you wish to use the Queensberry Rules:

1. Combatants act in initiative order. There is no longer a +2 bonus for winning initiative. Initiative order remains the same for the remainder of the combat.

2. Defensive rolls are no longer considered ‘actions.’ A combatant may always make a defensive roll unless otherwise stated. Multiple defensive rolls do not accrue black dice penalties, although defensive rolls may be affected by additional action penalties (see #4).

3. On her turn, a combatant can take her action and a number of additional actions equal to her Dexterity (certain weapons, such as firearms, may only be used as many times in a rounds their ROF allows). All actions are taken on the Combatant’s initiative turn. Actions cannot be "held," although Counter, Duel, and Evade actions are exceptions (see #6).

4. Each additional action incurs a cumulative 3 black dice penalty (so the first action has no penalty, the second takes a 3 black dice penalty, the third a 6 black dice penalty, etc). The final black dice penalty is applied to all of the combatant’s other rolls (such as concentration or defence) until her next turn.

5. When attacked, a combatant may choose any appropriate defence; melee blows may be parried with Fisticuffs or any melee weapon skill (black dice modifiers still apply as delineated in the unarmed against armed section). Dodge may always be used as a defence (modifiers for defending against ranged attacks apply).

6. In lieu of a defence, a combatant may Counter, Duel, or Evade, but these count as actions and incur the cumulative penalties. As an action, the combatant has to wait until her turn to use them.

7. Firing into melee is treated as if the target has cover (usually 3 black dice – the Gamesmaster may increase it if the target is engaged with multiple attackers). If you miss but would have hit save for the black dice, then you hit the covering combatant instead, using the total number of black dice successes as attack successes.

Great! These rules are golden, and I burn to playtest them. Unfortunately, I will lead a campaign not before November, but I will post my experience! Until then a clear +1 for that, googlish speaking ...
Thank you for this Walt!

forummr wrote:I recognized that with the new rules, there is no advantage in helping each other in combat.

Maybe a rule could be like that:

Aiding each other
For every ally, that is attacking an enemy before your attack role in a given round, you may add 1 dice to your attack dice pool.

I know, it's no rule with black dice, but I guess another factor which is adding black dice might be confusing...

What do you think?

A simpler solution would be to add 3 black dice for every defensive roll in a round. That way, if combatants gang up, it gets increasingly harder for an opponent to defend. Since I'm shooting from the hip I'm not certain how onerous that would be when factoring black dice from multiple attacks. You may want to parse them, but then you're keeping track of two black dice pools.

That's why I thought about adding dice to the attackers pool, although it should be really a malus for the defender.
An alternative would be a active "helping action" in combat, which doesn't trigger automaticly. Such as:

Make a ...... check, if successful, you are aiding an ally, and he gets three additional dice to his attack pool/defense pool until your next turn.

In our first session of Victoriana, the players struggled in what was supposed to be an easy fight against some skeletons. I decided to implement the Queensberry Rules. So far, this has gone well. Expecting the players to run afoul of a gang in our next session, I was reviewing the mob rules. Has anyone tried using the Queensberry Rules with mobs? Are there any adjustments I should make?